The American Healthcare System
The uninsured are individuals who are not covered by the medical cover. Garfield, et al. (2016) suggests that inadequate details on insurance and unaffordable insurance premiums result in many citizens lacking health cover. The uninsured groups in the United States are made up of the Hispanics, African Americans, Men, employees at small organizations and the poor. The paper aims to elaborate on what the uninsured are in the
United States in detail. Essentially, discussion on the topic will consist of reasons for the presence of the uninsured individuals in the U.S and the strategies that can be used to counter the challenge effectively.
Reasons for the Uninsured people
The aforementioned groups of people remain uninsured because they are low income families. The high cost of insurance is another reason for the presence of uninsured population in the United States. A number of
individuals also lack health insurance coverage through their area of work, and others remain ineligible for financial support for the coverage. The other challenge leading to uninsured individuals is lack of know-how on the requirements needed to attain a medical coverage (Hacker, 2012). Living without health insurance coverage has a negative consequence on people as they risk lacking decent medical services or limited access to medical
facilities that could help them manage ailments that require immense care, attention and financial implications in form of medical expenses.
The figure below portrays that as of 2015, 46% of the uninsured adults were incapable of accessing healthcare insurance due to cost. The percentage indicates that it is the most obvious reason contributing to uninsured Americans. From the pie chat, 7% indicates that they do not know the need to have a health insurance cover, whereas 13% perceive that the requirement does not suit their needs. On the other hand, the figure shows
that 11% tried to get the health cover, but were unable to get hold of the contents of the Affordable Care Act. 9% perceived that paying a fine was better than being insured and 14% had numerous reasons for being uninsured.
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Source: http://kff.org/
Strategies to counter the uninsured
To counter the challenges facing the uninsured, extending the eligibility of states that lag behind promoting and enhancing adoption of health insurance policies by their residents is inevitable. This would ensure more uninsured people embrace health insurance and enjoy the associated benefits. The Affordable Care Act ought to be implemented through informing the uninsured and the public as a whole the benevolence of signing up for an insurance cover (McMorrow, Kenney and Goin, 2014). The approach would increase the number of the insured and …
